Calling all true patriots: one of the Lads from Lagos has got himself into a right royal state and needs a quick $2k to fulfil a lifetime's ambition to hang a pic of Her Imperial Majestyness Queen Liz II on the wall. Read on...
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2007 18:15:52 +0100
From: Deepak Behera
Subject: A pleseant day to you
Hello, …

I believe him

Give him the real thing

Given this lads level of devotion, I reckon we should hand over the genuine article for another 500 quid, with Phil the Greek thrown in as a freebie. I bet yer man would be delighted to have a genuine Monarch gracing his living room rather than an old painting, and it would remove a constitutional barrier to a UK republic.

How's this 419?

419 is when you say "look chummy, I don't know who you are, and you don't know who I am. All you need to know, is that I'm going to give you ONE BILLION GILLION FIFFILION GABAZILLION POUNDS STERLING, and all I need is a post mark, and maybe some spare change to feed my uncle, who, by the way was a prince of Kuala Lumpur untill some naughty militants took over just untill very recently. This is a really good deal for you, seeing as how you invest very little, and the rewards are very high." After you rush to the post office to order 1000 pristine postmarks with the Queen depicted upside-down and inside-out, you get the second letter, the one about the lawyers and the banks and the fees. It goes something along the lines of "Hey dear chap, well, since now we are invested into this venture, we might as well go a little further. See, well, if I don't get 2000 pounds right away, I will be chopped to bits, my uncle will starve to death and the money? You can forget about it." This is of course when a lot of even the dimmest of the dimwits bail, but you - you perservere asking the poor black man to join your chirch and to write "I am a chicken, bukaaah!" on a piece of paper. Sometimes you can even make them act out a short scene from Monty Python...

That's what 419 is. Free entertainment at the expense of oppressed people, who want to scam you out of your millions of dollars.